


love shot

by kuraku



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Gun Violence, M/M, Paintball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 09:16:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21134309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuraku/pseuds/kuraku
Summary: a fun game of paintball with baekhyun and his friends turns into a real game of survival.【12 HORRORS 2019 → #D14 】





	love shot

**Author's Note:**

> for the mod team—
> 
> **Horror#:** D14  
**Title:** love shot  
**Pairing:** baekhyun/yixing  
**Rating:** R  
**TW:** blood/violence

Everything is washed in pink, green, and yellow shadows, like the inside of a gumball machine, painted so brightly in the sprays of neon fluorescents that Baekhyun finds it hard to even focus. When he closes his eyes, he can still see them: the way they cast swords of bright light across the floor in patterns that seem to pulse when the music pulses, the heavy bass and racketing guitar that blast over the speakers he imagines are in every corner of the place. 

He can’t remember who made the reservation—was it Chanyeol? Most likely: the entire place screams of his style, from the obnoxious metal music to the way their guns look like imitation military weapons, all careful details and painted edges. Baekhyun feels like he’s in some kind of cartoon; he feels like he’s being mocked somehow, like he’s been planted in the middle of the field with toys and foam bracers and ridiculous imitations that would hold no worth in a real fight.

It’s not a real fight, he reminds himself. It’s just paintball.

“Your head’s not in the game,” Jongdae teases from beside him. They’ve managed to find a place to hide: some off-shoot behind a group of obsolete black masses of brick and metal, large shapes that seem to loom up above them and provide some semblance of cover. His eyes roll over to look at Jongdae. He’s bright-eyed and amused as usual, but even Baekhyun knows this isn’t his style of game, not at all. It’s the kind of thing he goes along with for the sake of his friends, the kind of thing that he’d never commit to doing on his own.

They’re part of the red group—indicated by the tight, folded arm bands that loop around their sleeves. Chanyeol’s group is blue. The blue seems harder to see in the dim lighting, which makes Baekhyun wonder if he’s been tricked or fooled somehow. Normally the thought would annoy him, because that’s the way that Chanyeol always is: giving his own group advantages and hoping that no one will catch him along the way. _It’s not cheating_, he would say, in one of those voices that hits just a pitch below annoyed, as if he’s expecting argument all the time. Granted, one of Baekhyun’s favorite hobbies is to argue with him. He hadn’t, this time. He’d gone along with it because everyone else had.

His head’s not in the game. Jongdae’s right.

He’s thinking of how to find Yixing among the mess of players and obstacles and screeching music.

“How many are down?” he says, though he doesn’t know if Jongdae’s aware. He’d heard Jongin yell out, and there’d been a temporary gap in the music to allow for the loud, booming voice of a staff member announcing his departure. He wonders if he should just throw himself out in the open and offer up his body for target practice. At least then, he’d be out of the game with little loss to his character, and he could watch the screens from outside the arena to keep an eye on everyone. 

_Everyone_—like he’s really concerned about anyone else.

Chanyeol isn’t thoughtful enough to remember, but given that Baekhyun’s been living with Yixing for the past two years, it’s something he’s horribly aware of, a thought that lingers in the back of his head like the way it tastes to get a dash of pepper powder on his tongue, burning and burning away. It’s some kind of blood disease, some complicated name that Baekhyun always gets wrong and Yixing laughs about because it’s cute and charming, he says, though Baekhyun just thinks it makes him look stupid. A simple paper cut makes his fingers ooze for hours—a smartly timed paintball shot? He doesn’t want to think about how long it will take the bruise to heal, what the blood will look like withering beneath the skin.

It’s why he’d picked Yixing to be on his team first—and why he’d been angry that Yixing had agreed to come at all. 

_You need me there_, he’d said. Baekhyun isn’t sure that’s true at all. At most, Yixing is a distraction, a worry that makes his temper flare and his anxiety pinch his nerves. 

“Jongin’s out, and I think we hit Joonmyun,” Jongdae says mournfully. Baekhyun knows he’s had a crush on the man for at least half a year—he probably wants to sacrifice himself up to the paintball gods, too. Normally, he’d tease him about it, but right now, his attention is elsewhere, mentally tracking the map of the arena that they’d briefly been shown in the prep room before entering the game. Maybe if they circle the perimeter—he could ask Jongdae to cover him. They’re both decent shots, enough that they make a formidable duo. Chanyeol had been angry about that.

“Okay,” Baekhyun says, as he unwraps the Velcro wrist brace at one hand, drawing it back and in again to make it tighter. The sound is hardly noticeable against the racket around them; it’s a miracle they can even hear each other. His gun is propped up against one thigh—at first, he’d been worried about running out of paint balls, but his ammunition bubble is still painfully full, something that seems almost strange given how many stray shots he’s managed to splatter against the walls. 

“Let’s make a loop,” Baekhyun says, at the same time a voice yells out, sharp and in pain: “I’m hit!”

A chill runs through him, quick and cold, like a bucket of icy water and chunks of frozen icicles splash down the back of his shirt, dragging their ragged spikes down his skin. Jongdae curses under his breath, and Baekhyun grabs at his arm, squeezing it pointedly—there’s the sound of boots, the heels of them clacking against the tiled floor. Slowly, Baekhyun lifts his free hand to his lips, signaling silence; the other hand grips at his gun, hoisting it up against his chest.

And then there’s laughter—clear and bright, Chanyeol’s gleeful little giggle of triumph. 

“Got you,” he says, loudly, and Baekhyun presses his back against the cool, hard surface of the awkwardly-shaped obstacle they’re hiding behind. Carefully, Jongdae rises to his feet, rounding in front of Baekhyun to start inching away.

“You’re an asshole,” grumbles the voice from before, pained and weak. Baekhyun’s knees practically stagger with relief. It’s not Yixing, and he knows that he’s a jerk for even being grateful, but still—he’s grateful, enough that he blows out a slow breath of calm that seems to deflate all of his muscles, like they’d been tight balloon animals, twisted and pulled into tense shapes.

“Don’t be a baby,” Chanyeol teases, because for as long as Baekhyun has known him, he still doesn’t know when to stop. There’s another sharp sound, like a leg that scrapes across the floor, or maybe the edge of a gun, but Chanyeol laughs, the sound loud and echoing, billowing around them. Jongdae’s long gone at this point—Baekhyun should follow after him, but he finds that there’s something in the air that makes him uneasy. Even when he hears Chanyeol stalk away, presumably after another target, Baekhyun presses his spine to the black, shapely thing he’d been hiding against, creeping slowly around the corner to not draw anyone’s attention.

It’s Kyungsoo who’s sitting there, his legs sprawled out in front of him. Baekhyun would recognize that voice anywhere. Disappointingly, it means they’re another man down.

“I fucking hate that guy sometimes,” Kyungsoo grumbles, once he looks up to see Baekhyun crouching there next to him. His eyes are narrowed, but through the veil of annoyance, Baekhyun knows that there’s a good-natured fondness hiding behind it. Kyungsoo and Chanyeol have been best friends since they were nine—this is just the kind of relationship they have. Grinning, Baekhyun offers him a hand to help him stand—Kyungsoo tries to take it, but his palm feels wet, and clammy, and when they both get to their feet, Kyungsoo’s knees tremble, like his weight is uncertain on the balls of his feet.

“Did he hit you good?” Baekhyun says with a frown. Kyungsoo’s other hand is still clutching at his gun, but his fist is awkwardly closed in against a spot on his shoulder, which is likely where Chanyeol had hit him. Maybe he’d been too close, or maybe the paintball hadn’t even exploded on impact; shivering, he thinks of what Yixing might look like, the grimace of pain that would go across his features.

Maybe it’s just the flash of the lights when they soar across Kyungsoo’s body, arches of blues and reds and greens. Maybe it’s Baekhyun’s eyes playing tricks on him. But when Kyungsoo finally drops his arm down, his gun following suit, there’s a blooming, blossoming patch of red that spurts across the light fabric of his t-shirt, and Baekhyun doesn’t know what to do.

It’s paint, isn’t it? The red paint from Chanyeol’s gun. It makes sense. His paintballs are red. Kyungsoo’s shirt is now red. That’s all it is.

There’s a round hole, right at the spot where Kyungsoo’s sleeve connects to the rest. Squinting, Baekhyun bends in close—and recoils. The hole is dark, wet and gleaming; it smells like burnt meat, like the bits of fat and tendon that they scrub off the grill at barbecue. He looks up at Kyungsoo, whose eyes are glassy now, like he’s afraid of whatever it is he sees on Baekhyun’s face. He looks pale, and sick, and in a pain that Baekhyun isn’t sure he can understand just yet.

Immediately, he reaches for Kyungsoo’s arm, bending it and shoving it in against the hole. He doesn’t know why he does this, just that there’s some voice in his head screaming _put pressure on it_ and his body obeys the way a puppet would once the strings are pulled. 

“We need to get you to the door,” he says carefully. Kyungsoo nods, and goes quiet.

Except Baekhyun doesn’t know where the hell the door is.

“We need help!” he finds himself yelling out, so loud that even Kyungsoo’s eyes narrow and he tries to shove at him to be quiet. But this is what the staff are for, right? If he screams loud enough, they’ll shut the game down.

“I said, we need some fucking help!”

The music comes showering over them, an angry, jittering guitar riff that only gets louder and louder. Baekhyun takes Kyungsoo by one elbow and starts to move him in careful, slow steps. At the very least, they need to get towards the wall. Chanyeol seems to like to stalk around the middle, branching out from it like sunrays; if he gets Kyungsoo to the edge, maybe they can feel their way to the exit.

They walk as slowly as Baekhyun can manage when his entire body is stiff with nerves. When his palm finds the back of Kyungsoo’s shirt, it’s wet; frowning, he wipes his palm off on the thigh of his jeans.

“Take a left,” Baekhyun instructs. He can feel Kyungsoo’s body struggling.

“Something’s really wrong,” Kyungsoo finally says, after a few tense minutes of staggered movement. Baekhyun tries to smile, but he finds it’s hard to, like his lips have frozen into the tight, grim line that he feels them in. There’s a wall close to them at least, and Baekhyun takes Kyungsoo by the shoulders to lead him towards it, backing him in against it.

He reaches gently and takes Kyungsoo’s gun from his stubborn hold—after all, technically he’s not supposed to have it anymore, and even if it’s against the rules for Baekhyun to have two, he finds that he cares less and less. Kyungsoo’s arm lowers, shaky and slow, and Baekhyun realizes with some dismay that the red paint has spread, thick and wet into the fabric of Kyungsoo’s shirt like it’s weighed down with lead. 

But it’s not paint, because the color doesn’t start outside the fabric—it’s soaking through it, pushed up from inside.

Kyungsoo’s bleeding.

“Shit,” Baekhyun says under his breath, but Kyungsoo’s head is rocked back against the wall behind him like he doesn’t want to see. 

“What is it?” he hisses at him.

“You’re—“ But this doesn’t make any sense. Baekhyun had watched all of their guns be loaded with different colored paintballs, and the staff had even let them touch the things to see how much give they had. Baekhyun remembers throwing one out of his gun at Minseok; he’d nearly been throttled. His eyes narrow down at the two guns, held precariously in his arms. Both have the same identical ammunition bubbles that all of theirs had. Kyungsoo has purple balls, but Baekhyun’s are pink.

“Hang on.” He takes a step back from Kyungsoo, switches one gun to each hand, and immediately aims Kyungsoo’s gun at the wall next to him. He fires a shot. The purple ink explodes into a splotch of color on the wall. He fires another shot, and another. More and more paint builds there, dripping down the wall. Kyungsoo looks from it to Baekhyun, impatience starting to build in his gaze.

Frowning, Baekhyun fires one last shot. This time, a crack goes through the air—the sound is so loud that Kyungsoo winces, and even Baekhyun finds himself unsteady. Now, smouldering in the black painted wall, there’s a small, fiery hole in the middle of all the purple paint, and Baekhyun bends to look at it, moving one trembling finger along the circumference where it looks like something smashed and silver waits inside. It burns, stings at his skin, and when he draws back, he can tell that his flesh is sore, like a moment longer and whatever it was would have scorched right through.

His heart jumps into his throat. Kyungsoo’s back starts to slide against the wall.

“Sit,” Baekhyun agrees, and when Kyungsoo crumples down, he crouches in front of him again, pressing his gun against his bent legs. Quick, nimble hands go for the flag of red fabric that’s loose around Kyungsoo’s arm—_it’ll have to do_, Baekhyun thinks grimly, and unrolls the fabric so that he can try to tie it up around Kyungsoo’s shoulder. The cry of pain he expects—but he doesn’t expect himself to be shaking after, once he’s wrapped the wound up as tight as he can.

“I’m gonna find the exit, okay?” Baekhyun reassures him, and Kyungsoo’s dark eyes swing to look at him. He nods.

“Something’s fucking wrong with the guns. If anyone sees you, yell to them that you’re already out. Okay? We don’t want anyone else firing these.”

But why had it only been one random shot out of a couple? When Baekhyun starts to get to his feet, Kyungsoo reaches for him with his good arm, gripping at his wrist to give it a pointed squeeze.

“Be careful,” he says, and Baekhyun gives a swift nod.

When he moves, it’s with quick, long strides, the kind of thing that has him out of breath because his legs aren’t nearly long enough to keep up with his impatient movements. With his gun pointed at the ground, he fires off a pink shot with every step, and every time, a puddle of bright paint explodes at his heels, splattering onto his sneakers. It’s a path that will help lead him back to Kyungsoo eventually, but more than that—it’s a test, because his gun should have misfired, should have charged the shot or malfunctioned or _whatever_ it was that Kyungsoo’s gun had done before. 

The sound, he knows, is dangerous. He’s just asking for Chanyeol or Sehun to round a corner and pop him one in the face. The thought makes his bones chill.

He said he’d find the exit—and he meant it, truly, because with the wound in Kyungsoo’s shoulder and the way the blood soaked through his shirt like a towel drenched in water, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to stay out here too long. He needs a doctor. And shouldn’t the staff have seen that on the cameras? Shouldn’t they know that something’s wrong? In frustration, Baekhyun starts waving one of his arms over his head, the other still curved around his gun, still firing little pink shots of nothing into the ground.

It reminds him of something, a memory that feels so blurry, Baekhyun wants to wipe at it with his hand. His arm up in the air, gesturing painfully for someone. A streak of terror. Men he doesn’t recognize.

_You’re getting it_, Baekhyun thinks, but doesn’t know where the thought comes from.

Frustrated, he hooks around a corner—and crashes right into a smooth, familiar back. There’s the sweet lavender scent of shampoo, something that’s so gentle and calming he nearly forgets the way the music still pulses through the air and the lights scour over them as if searching for weakness, and a sound, something like a gasp, but Baekhyun loops his arm around and gropes for Yixing’s face.

He holds his palm over his mouth, silently, and they both hear another sound—something like laughter, coming from not too far away.

Slowly, Yixing turns around to look at him. His eyes are round, as if there’s no sense of impending danger in them, but they’re shrewd enough that the expression on Baekhyun’s face makes him eerily quiet. Baekhyun starts counting their heartbeats. One, two… twenty, thirty—

When his hand drops away, Yixing smiles at him, but it’s so watery that it would barely stick onto skin.

“I was wondering where you were,” Yixing says at the same time Baekhyun hisses, “We need to get out of here.”

Still, he has the time to give a cursory glance over Yixing’s body: everything is as it should be, no paint splatters or drips of blood or anything. Baekhyun isn’t sure if that makes him more relieved or simply more nervous, but when he reaches for Yixing’s free hand, he gives it a firm, bone-crushing squeeze, and Yixing doesn’t even question it, he just moves along with him.

Among the dark, shapeless objects around them, nestled in with the curved domes of the security cameras and the broad, rectangular speakers, there are the tiny little green frames of light, beaming a helpful image of a door and the blessed word that Baekhyun’s been hoping for. _The exit_, he sighs, and drags Yixing around a corner. His eyes flicker up and then down, and he completely forgets about shooting them a path of pink along the floor until Yixing jostles his gun and a spurt of purple paint hits a corner and coats the edge of an obstacle with it.

But does it matter? If he makes it to the exit with Yixing, then they can call for the staff to come. They can save Kyungsoo that way. It’ll all be okay.

Baekhyun rounds to where the exit should be: and there’s nothing.

He reaches out his hand—it’s just a wall, no hidden panels for a door, or a staircase, or anything.

He finds he can’t even remember how they got inside.

_Because you’re not inside,_ his mind tells him, and he hates the way that Yixing looks up at the exit sign and then down to him like they’re in a room that’s slowly filling with water, and there’s no hope for an escape.

Dragging Yixing along by the hand, they cross the width of the room to the other corner—nothing there, either, and Baekhyun shoves his gun against the wall in frustration. It should break the tip, maybe shatter it all into thick, plastic pieces, but it does nothing.

He realizes with a start that he can’t hear anything: not the pulsing music, not Yixing’s voice when he opens his mouth to speak, not the crunch of the gun against the plaster, nothing. There’s just a thin buzzing sound, a ringing like he’s on a plane or a helicopter and his ears won’t pop.

_You didn’t sign up for this._

Like a funnel, his ears seem to split open, and the sound comes pouring into them in a rush, so much so that when Yixing pries his hand free, Baekhyun’s fingers feel stiff and pained with tension.

“Baekhyun?” Yixing says again, softly. He’s peering at him, his gun at his side. “What are we going to do? What happened?”

Baekhyun licks his lips. “You won’t believe me, but something’s really _wrong_ here. Kyungsoo’s hurt, and—”

_You know what you need to do._

He starts pacing. Both of his hands come up against his head, pressing long fingertips there to try to bleed the tension out of his temples. It doesn’t help.

“Look, it sounds ridiculous, but…”

They’re on the same team, but it shouldn’t matter. Baekhyun drops his arms and reaches for Yixing’s wrist, guiding it up until his gun is steady in his grip. He tries to close the other’s fingers around it—Yixing readjusts, and holds it carefully still. Baekhyun takes a small step back.

If they do it the other way, Yixing could get hurt, either by the simple, blossoming bruises of the paintballs or the more serious, severe blood-letting burning hole of _whatever_. Either way, Baekhyun isn’t willing to sacrifice him. He isn’t willing to let him hurt.

“Shoot me,” Baekhyun says. He holds both of his arms out from his body, stretched like he’s giving Yixing more room to aim. Terrified, his fingers tremble until he closes his free hand into a fist. He doesn’t know what it feels like to be shot. He doesn’t know the kind of pain, or how hard it is to endure. He just knows that he has to.

He has to get out of the game.

_You have to wake up._

Yixing’s teeth catch on his lip. Baekhyun gives him a small, faint nod of reassurance.

The gun fires, and Baekhyun feels a searing, scorching pain through his chest—

And then nothing.

The room was a small, dank mess of wires and monitors, where so many cables looped up and around the ceilings that it was hard to tell if it was even there. Rather, it looked like a jungle, as though there could be spiders and beetles and spindly creepy crawlies just waiting to drop down and attack. The floor was dirty, tracked with the mud and dust of a thousand different staff members, and every one of them had touched the files and computer keyboards so many times that it was no wonder most of them got routinely sick. The beds weren’t much better—the leather straps and Velcro buckles looked worse for wear, ripped and torn in some places to reveal the stuffing underneath.

“I was rooting for you,” the scientist said softly, as the body on the bed twitched, convulsing faintly before going still again. With the thick, wide goggles over its face and the breathing tube stuffed far down its throat, here the body looked almost pitiful, decked out in the same off-brand uniform of all the human ‘donations’ they’d received from the local youth shelter. 

Yet this one, she admitted, this one had been her favorite: number zero-four, smart and handsome, a dedicated player in The Games and a hard-working, supportive friend. After all, he had somehow managed to make it to the Finals with his entire team intact, a feat that not many could boast among the programs. Here, though, they had been pitted against each other, and though she could see some of what they saw through their virtual reality headset, she was not privy to everything.

Carefully, with a gloved hand, she brushed her fingertips down along the subject’s cheek.

“Are the results in?” came the sudden, loud voice of her supervisor. The scientist straightened immediately into position.

“Zero-one-zero appears to be the final subject,” she announced, after checking the print-out on her clipboard. “The rest have all been wounded or perished In-Game.”

Clucking his tongue with displeasure, he glanced from one hospital bed to the next—nine of them stretched out along the floor, each attached to various tubing and wires and body monitoring equipment.

“Not zero-four?” 

The scientist shook her head. “No, he allowed himself to be shot by his partner.”

Her supervisor snickered. “He’s too weak for our purposes, then. Can you imagine any military outfitter wanting a boy soldier who asked to eat a bullet? Come on.”

“But sir—” She had more data. The boy had seemed to figure something out, and that was why he’d done it. He had some kind of plan. She’d read the brainwaves. He used advanced levels of deductive reasoning and—

“Terminate them all. Except the last one. We’ll send him to the higher-ups for evaluation.”

The scientist frowned. She hated this part. What was the point of all of their hard work if they were just going to kill all the failures? Now she’d have to start all over again with a new group. She’d have to get help to lug all the bodies down to the furnace, stuff them and all of their belongings inside. She hated the smell of burning bodies.

She’d suggested just burying them outside for compost once, but her supervisors had deemed the idea “too morbid.”

Reluctantly, she went to sit at the main computer, logging in to the console.

“Yes, sir,” she mumbled.

Lights began to flash in place as the system booted. The woman typed a sequence into the computer, then stopped—a ding from her phone alerted her, and she picked it out of her jacket pocket, swiping at the screen.

Somewhere along the long line of beds, among the nine friends who had been plucked from a place of supposed safety, who had survived four rounds of Games so far, who had never left any one of them behind to die—

On the bed with the boy who was deemed too weak to be of use, long, slender fingers began to twitch into life.


End file.
